


two way monologues

by lamphouse



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Chloe and Caleb trade powers, First Meetings, Gen, Getting Together, M/M, Roleswap, Runs from pre-canon to episode 20, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-13 12:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamphouse/pseuds/lamphouse
Summary: Chloe and Caleb are, as always, the preeminent one-sided conversationalists of their age. It's just a little different this time around.In which Chloe is the empath, Caleb is the telepath, and Dr. Bright still just wishes that for once her patients wouldn't be so dramatic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> program note: because the formatting of the chloe section is right aligned, it may be a little awkward to read. if you're on mobile or anchored half-screen, you should be fine, but if you're having issues in like a full screen browser, i've made a work skin for this fic that tweaks the width just a little to hopefully make it easier.

It takes about eight minutes of their first session for Caleb to ask it, which he figures has to be some kind of record.

"Why do you believe me?

Dr. Bright has been suggesting things Caleb might like to focus on in therapy, like learning how to focus what she calls his "ability" or how to control the emotional aspect of it or even control his ability totally and how to turn it on and off at will, which is a little scary, but all of it is without any hint of skepticism, and all of it with an even tone that belies the familiarity of repetition.

"You're not the first atypical I've met, Caleb," she says with a half smile, and Caleb is inclined to believe both her kindly sardonic tone and her words themselves. There is a chasm full of fog between Caleb and her thoughts that makes it hard to read anything clearly, but he manages to make out what looks like other people sitting on the sofa Caleb is on right now.

"There are other freaks like me?"

And the farther he looks and the harder he concentrates (though he's reaching the end of his concentration for the day), the clearer the image becomes. The image turns, slightly distorted with the distance of memory, but the people on the sofa start to move, snippets of conversation coming through about time travel and sparking hands and—

"Whoa, shit, did that girl just set fire to that plant with her _mind_?"

"I think it's important we not get ahead of ourselves," Dr. Bright finally gets in, but Caleb can hear her thinking four steps ahead in another direction. "You've only just begun to—"

"How many superpowers are there for real? Like me, sure, and what, a girl who can move things with her mind? Wow, cool, and... Mark? Who's Mark?"

"Caleb—"

"Why do I remind you of him?

"I—" This time she cuts herself off, but her thoughts continue with a speed that Caleb is starting to suspect she does on purpose. He manages to catch glimpses of _smart-ass_  and _handsome_ and _too kind for his own good_ , and Caleb isn't quite sure what to do with that before it slips out of his hands and the exhaustion starts to set in.

Caleb's confusion must still be showing on his face, though, because Dr. Bright's thoughts are quickly covered by fog again. It's super frustrating, both because it makes it hard to really understand who she is and because it forces Caleb to confront that it's only been, what, a week? And yet he's already so dependent on this new, weird, absolutely impossible part of who he is. It's not something happening to him anymore. It just _is_ him. And that's scary.

"Mark is... my brother," Dr. Bright is saying when Caleb tunes back in, and she must be choosing her words very carefully because Caleb can only hear that sentence repeated over and over in her head with an undercurrent of guilt sneaking in between every word. Every so often something surfaces, and although Caleb can't quite make out the words exactly there's a cold and frightened edge to it that stops him from pushing any further.

The fog in Dr. Bright's mind thickens again after that, and Caleb is more than a little exhausted from the effort, so the rest of the session passes in the blink of an eye. Soon enough Dr. Bright is ushering in Caleb's parents and handing out pamphlets and everyone is making appointments and everything like that and then Caleb is staring blankly out the window as houses flicker past. The car is silently aside from the anxious pressing of his parents' thoughts and all Caleb wants is a _nap_ , but he can't. Worry is exhausting but equally unending, especially for Caleb now. All it takes is for one of his thoughts to overlap slightly with one of his parents' and suddenly he's being pulled along by their worries as well, and his mind won't slow down, and he's got the running thoughts of three people when he's only one.

It's exhausting as fuck, and just as isolating, because apparently the universe loves shitting on Caleb enough to sink him alone in the middle of the ocean with no one talk to. Figures.

When Caleb gets home he immediately heads up to his room and throws himself back on his bed. He's become overly familiar with this one patch of ceiling over the past few weeks and it's easy to fall back into just staring blankly up at it. When he does, though, it all starts to come creeping in the edges of his consciousness—the arguing around him, all the different voices overlapping in the air and in his head and conflicting with each other, filling him up until there's nothing left of Caleb, and then his own shouts ringing in his ears.

Caleb in the present shuts his eyes and presses on them with the heels of his hands, but it doesn't stop. He opens them again and looks back up at the ceiling again, expecting it to be different for some reason. But it isn't. Instead it's just Caleb and his ceiling, and even as his parents' and his sister's thoughts drift up from down the stairs, the loneliness doesn't stop. It just doesn't feel like... _anything_.

So Caleb goes to school, goes to practice, goes home to stare at the walls and try not to either punch something or go out of his mind. It should be fine now that he knows he's not actually going insane, but it doesn't change the fact that every moment of every day is twice as loud as it should be. The hallways are louder, the classrooms are louder. The bus is a fucking nightmare, and Caleb started walking instead but the silence was just as bad so now he has to deal with his mom's worried glances and more every morning as she drives him to school. Lunch is just as terrible—he's started hiding in the library like some kind of fucking geek and it  _sucks_ , but it's better than the alternative of feeling his skull explode every time someone yells across the room to their friend.

He read once somewhere, or maybe his dad told him, about how much damage rock concerts or having your earbuds up too loud can do to your ears and your brain and Caleb wishes for just a second that he could tell people about whatever the hell this is just to see how many decibels the combined thoughts and feelings of everyone to ever exist is, because it sure as hell is ruining his mind.

ФФФ

Chloe Turner has always been a sensitive person. Her mother calls her "intuitive" (sometimes with a look on her face like the word means something different to her than it does the general population) and those less kind call her "moody" and "hysterical", but Chloe has always taken pride in it. Chloe feels a lot, that's a fact, and it's something she loves about herself. She loves being able to effortlessly read the moods of everyone around her and adapt to make them feel most at ease.

Which is why when the same empathy becomes so overwhelming so as to make her break down in the middle of a lecture because she can't focus and there's just so much going on, there are just too many emotions to field, that she completely snaps.

It's still a gift, right? Chloe has never felt as close to anyone as she does everyone now, and the times when she can't help but blurt out what she knows there's always a brief wince of suspicion before the gratefulness and understanding kicks in. It's... intoxicating, this total attunement with the universe, and it's totally awesome, but all too quickly it becomes too much. Not even a few days after she starts to notice it does it become overwhelming. Every day has a brief moment of peace when she wakes up, quickly followed by a barrage of feelings and messy contradictions between action and thought and the pressing, claustrophobic feeling of something too much in the air around her and it's all too much. She tries to keep it on the outside, but that's not who Chloe is, that's not how Chloe operates, so to be around other people she has to let them in and let the universe show her everything and ends up a vessel for other people's emotions, none of her own.

The worst part is that nobody believes her. There's a string of doctors after that afternoon outburst, hospital rooms in varying shades of beige and blue. Chloe starts collecting prescriptions like postcards, identical in everything but name and signature, and her inherent optimism starts to wear down to the point where she stops being able to tell the difference.

Chloe just needs somebody to believe her, somebody to understand and not immediately judge. Her mom is great in that regard, able to understand what it's like to do something everyone thinks is impossible, but...

She's Chloe's mom, you know? She has to believe Chloe. No one else does.

But she's Chloe's mom, so when she offers up one last possibility, Chloe takes it. That's how she ends up on another couch in another office, slightly different from the others. The layout is pretty much the same as every other therapist's or psychiatrist's or any other -ist's office she's been to in the last month, a couch and an armchair and a lamp and a desk in the corner, and even then the desk is curiously devoid of any personality, but there's something about it that feels more human. There is still art on the walls like all the others, but they aren't the standard craft store generic paintings and instead intriguing photography, stark and moving in their still lives and each with a little wonky signature in the corner. There are papers neatly stacked on the desk, but they're covered in even notes and highlights, and the books on the shelves have obviously been read over and over.

Dr. Bright herself looks completely at home, and Chloe feels a wave of calmness when she steps into the room. Whereas all the other doctors had been alienating in their transparent delight at getting to work with someone so unusual, so intriguingly strange, that the only slightly detached interest of Dr. Bright feels like shade in a desert.

More than that, though, is that she readily believes everything Chloe tells her. When Chloe describes the way she can feel the emotions of other people pushing in on her, Dr. Bright nods and asks if it's a physical sensation or more of a mental one. When Chloe tries to explain how sometimes her feelings become solely someone else's, Dr. Bright offers the perfect metaphor and a way to reframe it.

The only thing they disagree on is what to call it. Unfortunately, it's a big one.

Dr. Bright approaches the subject slowly at first, with a worry that Chloe can feel heavy on her tongue. "So, your mother tells me you believe this... ability of yours is because of angels."

"Yes," Chloe answers simply. When Dr. Bright's feelings of... doubt, maybe, start to climb to the surface, she continues, "Well, sort of. It sounds crazy, I know."

"I wasn't going to say that," and her emotions confirm. There's surprise, and something like sincerity, and something sad mixed in. "It's just... Why do you describe it that way?"

"Because that's what it is."

Dr. Bright motions for her to continue, the sadness now covered again by interest, or maybe more like curiosity. The calm of it filling the air makes Chloe take a deep breath until the weight of it fills her lungs. For a moment Dr. Bright's calm becomes Chloe's, and her curiosity and that bit of sadness come along with, and suddenly _nothing_ Chloe feels is her own.

"It's..." Chloe pauses to breathe, in and out, expelling as much of the foreign bodies as she can. "The universe opened itself up just a little, just for me, to show me the world that surrounds us all and connects us. It's like a song playing far away, where you can't hear the lyrics but you can feel it, the way it flows and the emotion of it."

Dr. Bright's attention doesn't waver but she looks up from her notes to nod at Chloe to continue, bringing a small smile to Chloe's face.

"I can feel myself line up perfectly with the world, like I just snap into the perfectly Chloe-sized hole in space and suddenly everything is right in front of me, every feeling and urge and reaction right in front of me even though no one else can seem to see it."

"Do _you_ see it? Physically, I mean—Do you see people's emotions?" Dr. Bright asks. Her pen is poised perfectly over her notepad and her curiosity is thin but persistent, pushing forward against the air almost like she's holding it all back.

Something about that gives Chloe pause, but she answers, "No, not really. It's more like I can just sense them in the air around me, like if I reached out I could touch someone's happiness or frustration, but I can't actually see it. I don't have hallucinations."

"I wasn't trying to imply you did." Dr. Bright pauses her note-taking to look Chloe in the eye and this time her feeling of sincerity comes across with no filter, like a little spotlight. "I'm just trying to... ascertain what exactly the extent of your ability is."

Chloe can't help but frown at the word. "'Ability'. What does that even mean? It's not like it's a, a skill or something."

"Your extra-ordinary empathy," Dr. Bright adds, keeping a distinct space between the words to try clarify, but to no real avail.

"Empathy," Chloe repeats dubiously. Well, yeah. Chloe has that, obviously. Everyone does. Or, well, most people, and there's nothing wrong with those who don't, but the point is that Chloe sure has empathy, and a lot of it, and there's nothing abnormal about that. When she points that out to Dr. Bright, though, she sighs slightly and readjusts her glasses in what Chloe is learning is a habit of hers.

"Well, yes," Dr. Bright says as a swipe of cold grey-green comes up like a sheet of glass in front of her. Chloe's starting to feel the strain, a headache pushing its way to the front of her head, so it's hard to pin down what exactly the feeling is. Anger, no, frustration, and kept at a distance, so then it's being repressed. "But not quite like this. I believe you have empathy in the atypical sense."

"And what does _that_ mean?"

With Dr. Bright's frustration and her own layering on top of each other, Chloe can feel herself getting worked up. The helplessness of feeling her emotions getting carried away by someone else usually doesn't consciously occur to Chloe until it's too late, but she's starting to get a hold on it and swallows the fear, if not the frustration.

Dr. Bright crosses her arms over her notes and leans forward so Chloe has no choice but to look her in the eye. "The way you've described your ability to correctly intuit the internal emotions of others, combined with the physical side effects that accompany overuse of your ability, leads me to believe you have what we would call atypical empathy."

"We who?" Chloe asks. Because she's already paying attention she catches the brief flash of fear that crosses Dr. Bright's emotional landscape.

"Myself and other therapists like me who deal with atypical patients," she says, and the distance is back, keeping her emotions far away enough that Chloe can't see them. That's... a little worrisome, but Chloe doesn't say anything as Dr. Bright continues, "I'm sorry, Chloe, I really shouldn't be discussing other patients or practices. I have to maintain confidentiality."

"Right..."

For a moment neither of them says anything. Chloe can't help the undoubtedly skeptical expression on her face, but as Dr. Bright's emotions become more and more cold and distant, she can't help but wonder if something's up.

In the end, Dr. Bright is the one that breaks the silence.

"Current research points to the theory that abilities like yours are due to a difference in brain chemistry, not unlike that of established psychological disorders." Dr. Bright shifts her notes around and comes up with a few pamphlets with titles like _Finding Peace of Mind_ and _Synesthesia: Inspiration, Creation, Relation_ , which she hands to Chloe. "I know they probably look silly, but I've found that traditional therapeutic treatment alongside more specific exercises to hone and get control over your ability is the best course of action, but your therapy is what you want to make of it."

Chloe can't help the sickly feeling that crawls up her throat as she accepts the stack. Not-distant-enough memories of clipboards and pricked fingers and measures down to the centimeter of how far her range is rise to the surface. Chloe can only imagine what her face must be doing right now (she's never been good at controlling her expressions) but it must be doing something because when Dr. Bright speaks again it's heavy with concern.

"Chloe?"

"I guess it's better than bipolar," Chloe says, and she doesn't really mean it, but she doesn't know exactly which part of everything Dr. Bright has just thrown at her is the upsetting part and she's just too tired to figure it out. Any optimism she had felt going in has vanished, and the void left behind is filled by Dr. Bright's intellectual curiosity and her own exhaustion and the chasm of nothing that lurks behind every emotion that she's so scared will eventually take over everything.

But now there's a little hope creeping in around the edges, the idea that someone else might believe her, that she might not be going crazy, that there might be a way for her to survive this and not want to tear her hair out every time she has to cross the street during rush hour.

So, all in all, a good enough beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been working on this for ages!!!! it's not quite done yet and i'm sure the sections will be awkward since i wrote it to be posted all in one go, but i really wanted to get it up before the show ended and everyone shoved off into the night. pls lemme know what you think!!! or just lurk, i don't mind lol


	2. Chapter 2

With great power comes great responsibility. Caleb offers that once to Dr. Bright when they're talking about the ethical grey area that is being able to hear people's innermost thoughts and she sighs before admitting yes, Uncle Ben did have a point. It's not really a joke, though. It's stupidly hard and Caleb wishes every day that he could give up on the whole thing all together, the positives as well as the negatives (although he hasn't really seen many positives). Number one, of course, is the exhaustion and the constant headache, but close behind it is the trouble of keeping straight what someone just thought and what they actually said.

Caleb tries. He really does, but sometimes things slip through and he can't help but use the information, like when they have a quiz and everyone's thinking about the same thing Caleb is trying to. It's kind of hard to ignore when someone feels really confident about an answer Caleb has no clue about. Especially as things get clearer, it's getting harder and harder to ignore all the things he knows that he really shouldn't and not let slip that he knows them at all.

So when Caleb is leaving class and sees a couple of dicks pushing that sad kid from English class, Adam, into the lockers, and he can hear both the stupid internal justifications of the two assholes and the hollowness of Adam's thoughts and the underlying fear coming from both sides, Caleb maybe says some things he knows he really shouldn't. Shit.

"Leave him alone, alright? Dude's sad enough as it is," Caleb says without thinking at all. Immediately he regrets it, but it's too late, and he almost physically flinches because the annoyance and _hurt_ of Adam's thoughts are almost loud enough to drown out the actual words. When Caleb is finally able to sift through the words, the guilt that's started settling in his chest gets five times as heavy, and when he goes to apologize or something, he really isn't sure yet, Adam is gone.

"I know you don't want to hear this, Caleb," Dr. Bright says when Caleb tells her about it later that week, "but it just takes practice." Caleb rolls his eyes. "You've already gotten so much better at controlling your ability in the past few months. It will take time to develop the kind of filter you'll need to avoid this 'blurting things out', but you'll get there."

Caleb swats away all the pieces of recovery planning bullshit Dr. Bright is thinking and interrupts, "It's not that, though. It's just him! I don't know what it is about him but he's just so fucking sad all the time and I can feel it suffocating me whenever we're in the same room."

"Have you tried talking to him?" Caleb crosses his arms and tries not to roll his eyes again, but Dr. Bright must be able to tell that he wants to because she reacts just the same. "Caleb, we've talked about this. Telepathy is not a substitute for conversation. The things that people choose to say and how they choose to say it are just as important as the things you read in their thoughts."

"Yeah, I know, actions speak louder than words and all that shit," Caleb says, "but it's not that. It's just this one guy. I always hear things, but sometimes other things come with them, like, emotions and stuff. Usually it's only with really intense thoughts, like if someone is angry, or sad, or something." He pauses, trying to come up with a way to put it that doesn't sound super emo, but there isn't any. "With Adam, it's like... I don't know, it's like that all the time. I get the whole emotional dimension or whatever you wanna call it every time he's in the room, no matter what."

"Has that ever happened before?" Dr. Bright asks. "Has there ever been someone whose emotions are a constant presence in their thoughts?"

"Kind of? I mean, I guess with my parents and Alice it's sort of easier to pick them out, cuz I already know the way that they think, so it takes less energy to feel more? But it's not a constant thing like that. I still have to make the choice to think harder. With Adam it's not like that at all."

"Why do you think that is?" Her thoughts are going faster than her pen can keep up with and Caleb gets a little disoriented trying to read them both simultaneously. 

"Wh— I don't know," Caleb says, and he can feel himself getting defensive but he can't help it. Dr. Bright's thoughts are a layered wall of _the challenges ahead_ and all kinds of _future concerns_ , all headed straight for Caleb, and it hits him like a tsunami. "That's not the point, okay? The point is that I can't deal with this kid's thoughts and emotions all the time, like, trying to take over my own or whatever. This thing already sucks enough as it is, I don't wanna turn out extra weird or something."

In the end, Dr. Bright doesn't have any more answers than Caleb does, other than to suggest that Caleb do all the things he doesn't want to like talking and reaching out and shit like that. Unfortunately, Caleb doesn't really have any other ideas, so fuck it, right? He's got nothing to lose except his own mind, and if he doesn't he's gonna lose it anyway, so might as well.

So the next afternoon, Caleb talks to Adam. The kid's thoughts are like a fucking paragraph at a time, jumping from sentence to sentence with seemingly no rhyme or reason, but even as overwhelming as it is somehow he still makes sense. It's so weird that Caleb almost goes back to his desk, but that would be even weirder, so he just asks if Adam wants to eat lunch with him and gets a yes and goes back to his desk.

When Caleb turns to leave, though, he runs straight into Caitlin. She must have been waiting right behind him and he almost stumbles back into Adam's desk as surprise emanates from all three of them. Somehow he didn't notice her thoughts before, but when he sees her they come in a nervous flurry. _I can't do it, I can't do it,_ and  _I have to do it or Katie will kill me_ , and  _No, you know what, I can totally do this_ hit Caleb all at once, and he almost doesn't hear when she actually asks him to the dance. For some reason he says yes and the nervousness coming from Caitlin gets even stronger, but in the back of his head he can hear Adam thinking, _Well, that was awkward_, and that somehow makes it a little better.

"So," Adam says once they've made their way outside and are both awkwardly picking at their own food. "Sadie's, huh?"

"Yeah?"

Adam doesn't say anything, but he thinks, _Sounds about right_ , and there's a wave of disappointment-but-not-disappointment, like he thought whatever was going to happen anyway but still thinks it sucks. Whatever "it" is.

He doesn't know why, but Caleb suddenly feels like it's incredibly important that Adam know that it's not like that, whatever this "it" is either.

"No, I mean— We're not—" Caleb swallows the rest of his fry before continuing, "It's not like that. I don't even like her like that. I don't know why I said yes."

"Well she definitely likes you." Adam sounds blase, but there's a spark of happiness as he thinks, _Score one for Adam_.

Caleb doesn't know what to make of that exactly, but after the first stumblings the rest of their conversation flows easily, somehow. Since getting his ability Caleb's found it just as hard to have one on one conversations as he has being in a crowd of so many different people thinking so many different things. When it's just him and another person both thinking about the same thing, it's so easy to let the other's thoughts and feelings take over, as awful a feeling as that is.

Based on the experiences he's had with reading Adam's thoughts before, Caleb would've guessed that it would be like that all the time, but it's not at all. The endless stream of Adam's observations and inside jokes and questions (so many questions) washes over Caleb without ever overpowering him. It's refreshingly nice, and for the first time since this whole nightmare started Caleb doesn't wish he could go back to what it was like before.

And Adam is actually pretty cool, which surprises Caleb more than he's ever admit. Not even just in that he isn't as emo as he seems, or that they actually have a lot in common, but he's just a genuinely good dude. He's sad a lot, sure, but he's funny and super smart, to the point where it actually scares Caleb a little, and funny, in his very dry way. He actually says what he thinks, which Caleb appreciates. There's no cognitive dissonance when talking to Adam. What he thinks is what he says, and what he says is what he means. The only thing he holds back are a couple of jokes he deems too mean, which, too be fair, there are quite a number of.

"You're kind of a dick, you know that?" Caleb says to him a couple days after they first started hanging out, and Adam may roll his eyes but Caleb knows that he's smiling inside.

"I would say that you are too," Adam replies, "but that wouldn't be a surprise to anyone."

Caleb is about to fire back when he hears,  _Except he's not, really. Caleb is actually really nice, and kind? You never would've thought that. It's nice to know_ _._ It feels a little intrusive to be hearing something so obviously not intended for him to ever hear, but at the same time it feels really, really nice, so Caleb holds onto it.

Anyway, Adam is pretty cool. He actually likes Shakespeare and fucking Latin, of all things, but not at all in a pretentious way. He's a really fast talker, almost as fast as his thoughts. He says most people are idiots but He has a lot of opinions on every musician ever and the most ironclad deadpan Caleb has ever seen, and he laughs at Caleb's jokes but isn't afraid to tell him when he's not being funny which somehow makes Caleb like him even more? Caleb doesn't know, it's weird, but it somehow makes sense. He's finding out that that's how a lot of things with Adam are.

ФФФ

Chloe is getting _really_ good at this. After only a few sessions—especially since they started doing meditation, which is way more Chloe's speed than any pamphlet—and some time alone, not only is it less of a constant headache to be around people, but she's even gotten better at identifying the emotions of others too. With even just a little bit of practice, the amorphous colors and shapes she feels around her every day are becoming more defined. Chloe finds herself turning more and more to the dinky little emotions wheel Dr. Bright had given her to help identify certain shades or textures. One glance in someone's direction is all it takes to turn the haze of purple in the corner of her mind into startled, which is different from surprise and not too far from amazed, she's finding. The more specific she gets, the less it feels like a constant dull ache around her, and the more it becomes just as normal to Chloe as breathing. It would all be a little terrifying if it weren't so cool.

(There's no need to tell Dr. Bright this, of course, but Chloe _is_ starting to admit that maybe ability is the best word, and she was right in a lot of other ways too. Maybe she has a point after all.)

It's because Chloe is doing so well that what happens (when it happens) scares her so much. She's walking to therapy on an average Tuesday afternoon when out of nowhere a maelstrom of emotion hits her. One moment Chloe steps forward and is plunged into whirling color and emotion that feels like it's going to literally sweep her off her feet, and then the next it's disappeared just as suddenly, like a storm localized to four squares of pavement.

It's so sudden that Chloe stumbles, jostling into the person ahead of her at the corner. The anger and frustration and _hurt_ of whoever it was seeps slowly into her skin, thick layers upon layers of paint coating her arms that make it impossible to hold on to everything. Chloe keeps walking on autopilot even as her brain is shouting at her to go home and hide in the dark for an hour at least. All that propels her forward is the clawing feeling of being in someone else's skin and the hollow void of feeling nothing at her back.

Instead of the office, though, Chloe finds herself hiding out in a cafe, practically chugging herbal tea to calm herself down. There was something about the experience that was so oddly thrilling, like for all that it scared her there was just _something_ there she needed to see. The small, quickly developing voice in her head that sounds like Dr. Bright points out how unhealthy her new plan probably is, but Chloe quickly squashes that thought. Sometimes there are things you just have to do, whether they're good for you or not.

Once she's imbibed enough chamomile to sedate an elephant, Chloe emerges to carefully retrace her steps. Left for two blocks, right for one, Chloe pauses on the last corner to steel herself before plunging back in.

She's taken all of two steps before it all comes rushing back. Anger, hurt, and a love so powerful and so unexpected that Chloe drops onto the nearest bench and sits there as the waves of emotion sweep over her.

They start to take on shapes, fluid lines that twist and waver but stay still enough for their deliberateness to shine through. The longer Chloe looks and the further out she reaches, the more distinct they steady they become. First there's a series of deep reds and purples that feel like a warm cave, deep underground, then something soft and green and gentle— Comforted, which Chloe had never thought of as an emotion, but it's like when someone hands you a blanket before you can ask for one. The rest have so much pain that it's hard to look at, so to speak, but Chloe has to, and the flinty grey and orange that floods her mind is so arid that Chloe can feel her own mouth go dry. There was some respite in the middle where a unity ties together the chaotic strokes and smears, but all that Chloe can make out after is empty, barren shades of white. It's the void Chloe knows and fears, and the longer she stares at it, the more powerful the feeling grows, feeding in on itself over and over until it threatens to suffocate.

Suddenly Chloe's eyes snap open, and she doesn't even have time to contemplate how she hadn't even noticed they were closed before she sees him staring back at her. Not ten feet away sits a man in the alley that Chloe knows now is the source of it all. For a moment, everything else ceases to exist. Blurry people walk between them on the sidewalk with silent footsteps silent as the world around them fades to black. Nothing can break the connection when they meet eyes, and Chloe can feel something palpable growing in the distance between them when all the connection surges and Chloe _has_ to run away.

Her feet carry her into Dr. Bright's office only twenty minutes late, but it feels like a lifetime. Dr. Bright is standing at the reception desk talking with Sarah and looks up when Chloe bursts in, the air immediately spiked with concern.

"Chloe?" Dr. Bright asks simultaneously with Sarah's, "Are you alright?"

Dr. Bright, always fast on her feet, quickly ushers Chloe back into her office where Chloe throws herself onto the couch. She can't stop vibrating. Shaking? Whatever it is, it's definitely the adrenaline.

"Chloe," Dr. Bright repeats as she shuts the door, but Chloe cuts her off.

"I had this— I don't know what to call it, I guess, this experience?" Chloe rushes to say. She can feel her knee bouncing up and down uncontrollably and knows that this can't possible look good, but she's thrumming with too much energy to stop herself.

"Dr. Bright, it was amazing. And terrifying. I don't know, it was just—"

"Chloe, calm down," Dr. Bright interjects before Chloe starts hyperventilating. "In and out, remember? Start at the beginning."

After a few calming breaths, Chloe does. She tells Dr. Bright everything—the overwhelming strength, how she was caught off-guard with no way to cope, the eerie familiarity and strangeness both.

"It was every feeling at once coming from one person, and they were all so _deep_ ," Chloe continues over Dr. Bright's growing and uncharacteristic confusion, "like I could see all the facets of everything he was feeling. It wasn't just like a general anger, it was disappointment and guilt and betrayal and all sorts of little things at once that fit together into something larger."

It's a weak facsimile of the real thing, but still isn't really sure how to describe it—the way it's like her ability has been on the lowest setting of a dimmer switch and then suddenly everything is ratcheted up to the highest sensitivity possible. How even when the emotions are upsetting (which they are, more often than not) there's something so immediate and honest about them that Chloe can't help but want to feel more. There's no way of putting it that doesn't sound unhealthy or crazy (even for her), though, so Chloe moves on.

"I don't, it just... Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I could feel everything he could feel, like I was him, and I could feel the universe pushing me towards him and it wasn't good necessarily, it was just... It was unavoidable. I know there was something about him that I was supposed to pay attention to. I know, this doesn't make any sense. It was just so much at once that it was unavoidable, like the usual swirl of emotions I feel when I'm in the middle of a crowd, but all coming from one person."

"But you still knew the emotions were all coming from just him," Dr. Bright supplies with just enough of a lilt at the end that it may be mistaken for a question.

Chloe nods and scoots forward a little to sit on the very edge of the couch. "They all had the same... style, I guess? Usually when I spend enough time around a person I get to know exactly their feelings feel and it stops being just the general shape and color of it but something more specific to them, with texture and everything."

At that, Dr. Bright offers her an encouraging smile. "It seems like you're learning to direct your focus and better interpret the information you're getting."

It's not entirely untrue, but Chloe shakes her head a little anyway. "It's not that, exactly. I mean, I think you're right, but this was just all of a sudden easy and with no effort. I just... got it. He's an artist too."

Dr. Bright's curiosity spikes again. "How do you know that?"

"Well..." Chloe shuffles in her seat, trying to think of a way to phrase it that doesn't sound creepy. "It's just... the way his feelings feel. Or, no, not exactly, but the way he feels things is like art. I don't know, it's hard to explain, but he feels the way artists do."

"You've said that before. What do you mean by that?" By now Dr. Bright's regular self-imposed distance is only barely covering the real interest she feels, and as always it's a little bit of a surprise. It's not that Chloe thinks Dr. Bright is a robot or anything, but her feelings always have this cold tinge to them, like there's a chasm of open air separating them. It's uncomfortable, and kind of unnerving, but moments like now are encouraging.

"You know, like your feelings are very organized and distinct, like plastic but not in a fake way, and my mom's are kind of fluid and mix together, and soft around the edges like wool. His were like wet clay, I guess, but that's not the point. It wasn't how they felt, it was just how easy it was to feel them, and what they were, and everything else."

When Chloe stops talking, Dr. Bright sets down her pen with a look of consideration. Chloe can feel it coming, like the muggy air that blows in right before a storm. Not a warning, but a definite change in tone. Chloe feels herself tense before Dr. Bright even speaks.

"Chloe..." Chloe glare at her and Dr. Bright raises her hands, changing her tone. "I know you're a smart young woman. I know you know what this sounds like."

"I'm not high, if that's what you're implying," Chloe says, even though she knows that's not what Dr. Bright means. She still can't help but feel like she's being patronized to, and the weird sad-guilt-pity feeling Dr. Bright has going on right now crawls up Chloe's skin.

"I know that," Dr. Bright says, "but I want you to be careful. We don't know why this man affects you like this, and we don't know what it could mean, or how it could with more exposure. This seems like it was a _very_ intense experience for you, and I don't know how smart it is to go right back."

The way she says "we" grates on Chloe, but she gets it. It makes sense. That's why it's so frustrating.

"I just," Chloe sighs. "I need to know, Dr. Bright. This has never happened before. It's never been every single emotion at once, and in that way. I have to know why, and I have to help him if I can."

Now she's feeling something like pride, and Chloe knows even less about what to do with _that_. It's still unnaturally cold, although the longer Chloe spends around Dr. Bright the more that seems to be fading away, and a little suspect in the context. It doesn't make sense, so Chloe asks.

"Why are you proud of me?"

Dr. Bright seems taken aback but she quickly recovers. "I suppose I just understand the urge, and hope I would do the same if I were in your situation."

Chloe doesn't quite know what to do with that, but she nods anyway. She has a lot of things to think about, but the voice in her head that sounds like Dr. Bright is definitely not going anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at first i thought posting this in installments would be too awkward cuz the way i wrote this was just a caleb scene, a chloe scene, etc, and i thought they would be too disparate to pair up like that, but now i'm realizing that actually they're WAY too similar lmao
> 
> comments and kudos are, as always, greatly appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

Once it stops being a constant pain in the ass (or, as it is, head), Caleb finds that being able to read minds is actually pretty cool. It annoys the crap out of Alice that she can't prank him anymore, and it makes sometimes tedious conversations with his dad go a lot quicker.

The coolest part, though, comes every Friday night. Two dozen voices murmuring plays and strategies and worries simplified by the unity of each side dilutes the whole world into two simple thoughts, _us_ versus _them_ in its simplest and least toxic form. It's a kind of clarity that Caleb's hasn't experienced anywhere else since his power started, and it never fails to snap him into a focus that would a little scary if it wasn't so cool. As it is, it's just fucking exhilarating. Every step is in bullet time, every second happening forever, and colors are brighter and the normal roar of other people's is muted to white noise and all that matters is in front of him. It's exactly the way it feels in the movies but better because it's real, and Caleb wouldn't trade the feeling for any other in the world.

When he first explains all of this to Dr. Bright, literal alarms start going off in her head, and yeah, looking back now Caleb can see why. She warns him about the dangers of becoming addicted to his ability, something he can't ever escape, and the accompanying thoughts are clinical but gruesome enough to scare him into at least being more conscious of it. It makes sense. There's a king of hypnotic thrall to the experience that (combined with the way Caleb always finds himself running on pure instinct during games) makes it hard to snap out of the focus, and leaves him in a lethargic but irritated state that's hard to shake afterwards.

It's like he becomes a zombie the second the last buzzer goes off and everyone disperses off the field. Adam's taken to calling it "football mode", and as teasing as it always sounds, Caleb is inclined to agree. It's not like that all-consuming focus is a switch he can flip on and off, try as he might. It takes some time to recover and if Caleb doesn't get into the right headspace before returning to everyone else's heads he shuts down completely. Usually he tries to ride it out back in the locker room, waiting until the stands have emptied before re-emerging into his mom's waiting car, as the bus is long gone. It's harder at away games where he's dumped immediately into either the chaotic elation of a win or the bottomless despair of failure. It's like the game drains him of everything and Caleb is left like some boat adrift off the coast, buffeted at the ocean's whim.

Adam gets that. Somehow. For all his ribbing, Adam understands _how_ Caleb shuts down, if not exactly _why_ , and he's always there to make it easier even when it's just by doing nothing at all. Sometimes it just takes seeing Adam leaning up against the fence or rushing over to hug him to make Caleb feel less like he's being shoved into the deep end and more like he's carefully taking the steps down into the shallows.

"You know, you're not as stupid as you look," Adam says one night. They're posted up against the back fence, leaning over in what Adam, for one, is trying to make look like an aloof way and watching the last of the cars leave. The game ended twenty minutes ago, the buses back to school not long after that, and Adam has his dad's car but for some reason the two of them are always the last to leave.

Caleb blinks back into the world and shoots him a look. "Since when have I ever looked stupid?"

When Adam looks back at him it's with his favorite wry, eyebrow raised expression, but the overwhelming fondness of his thoughts leaves no room for misinterpretation. "You know what I mean," he says out loud, and then behind it, _and you know I don't really mean it, or at least I hope you do. Please don't think I'm being mean, this is just how I show affection_.

And if that thought doesn't trip Caleb up, the one close on its heels does.

"I know that you think I'm an idiot..."

_Of course I don't. Idiot._

"But—"

_Cute though. Really cute. Like just a really cute idiot that maybe I wanna kiss a lot or something._

Caleb stops completely, his train of thought derailed and his brain unable to process anything other than _Adam wants to kiss me, Adam wants to kiss_ _me? Adam wants to _ _kiss_ _me, what the fuck_. He's just moving on to actually thinking about it—what it would be like to just reach over and take Adam's face in his hands, if he'd feel warm despite the cooling air, what his lips would...

And then Adam is looking at him ascance, his thoughts a panicked _what did I do, does he know what I just—_ and the guilt that suckerpunches Caleb at that moment is absolutely paralyzing.

He knows he says something next, something joking but a little stilted, and Adam goes with it with only a twinge of internal paranoia, but Caleb's mind is millions of miles away. It would be a nice break from reality if it weren't for the fact that he's just sitting with the knowledge that there's no way he can tell Adam how he feels if he doesn't tell him all the rest too, and _that_ is a paralysing enough fear on its own without the compounding fact that it could mean losing something so bizarrely unbizarre. Questions of ethics aside, Adam is somehow the only normal thing in Caleb's life anymore, and Caleb is so afraid of risking the only thing that makes sense because it _doesn't_ make sense, and he has no idea how to fix it if it all goes wrong.

It doesn't make sense, it— it _shouldn't_ make sense. There's a disorganization to the way Adam's thoughts jump from one to the other, like the normal shortcuts people use to think about everyday things but all the time and always, and it shouldn't make any sense at all but it does, more than anything. Being in Adam's head is like being in his own, and still he manages to surprise Caleb, which is somehow an even more extraordinary thing within an already extraordinary one. It's so overwhelming and yet the easiest thing in the world, and apparently that's the one conflict Caleb can't seem to reconcile.

"You okay?" Adam asks after a little while, and Caleb is, for once, grateful that Adam seems to be chalking this up to just another example of Caleb's weird football brain.

"Yeah," Caleb manages, "just tired."

Adam hums sympathetically. "You wanna go?"

He asks it like he already knows the answer, somehow, and Caleb isn't fully convinced he doesn't actually. When Caleb nods, Adam puts his hand on his arm for just a moment longer than necessary, and in that moment, at least, everything makes sense.

ФФФ

It takes some getting used to, but eventually Chloe and Frank fall into a rhythm. Chloe learns how to actually paint, Frank learns how to put into words what he feels and imagines. It's a constant act of somewhat clumsy translation and they're both learning from each other, but there's something fundamentally easy about the give and take between them that makes it worth the starts and stops. The journey is frustrating, but Chloe figures out how to interpret Frank's feelings and impressions into art, and with practice the swirls of green and slashes of burnt red find their proper places on the canvas. It helps when Frank starts to open up, telling Chloe not only which particular shade is right for this part but the stories behind the paintings.

He doesn't ask how she knows, or why she came up to him in the first place. Chloe is pretty sure he knows somehow, and it wouldn't even be the weirdest thing. That is reserved for the way that not only Chloe anticipates Frank's actions based on his feelings but how accurately she can, and how often the reverse is just as true.

That's the most curious part. It keeps happening the more time they spend together—in the studio Frank will pass her a brush just as she turns around to ask for one, or at Chloe's house she won't even have a chance to tell Frank in the other room that his timer is about to go off before he's already there. Ordinarily these moments on their own wouldn't be worth mentioning, but the way that the two of them happen to be so immediately in sync, and how it keeps happening over and over, gives Chloe pause.

"Chloe?" Frank asks when one of those pauses manifests literally. He's holding out a little bowl with the exact shade of red Chloe hadn't yet asked for.

Chloe stares blankly at the paint before reflexes take over and she takes it. "Yeah," she says. "Thanks."

They continue as usual, Chloe trying to match the patterns and colors in her head as best she can and Frankly quietly pointing out little details to add. It's strange that it only now strikes her as strange, but she realizes that Frank has never once questioned how she knows what to paint without him telling her.

"Do you believe in serendipity?" She asks.

"What?"

"There's something... I don't know," Chloe shakes her head and focuses on the swirling paint water in front of her for a moment, though whether it's for inspiration or explanation or just plain distraction, she doesn't know. "I just feel like we were supposed to meet."

"Like fate?" Frank looks contemplatively out the window. He gets quiet like this sometimes and Chloe understands it, but that means she isn't expecting it when he says, "Yeah, I think so."

When Chloe looks back up, Frank is already looking at her. He's holding the tube of white paint in one both hands and Chloe notices first that he's right, the red  _should_ be a little lighter, and then that his hands aren't shaking as much anymore. Like he could hear her thoughts, Frank half smiles.

"It's been getting better," he says, and Chloe has to resist the urge to throw her arms around him. After a second of consideration, she does anyway, and Frank laughs. It's such a nice moment that Chloe almost cries, and then she knows what she has to do.

"I have to tell you something," Chloe says while she doesn't have to look him in the eye.

Unfortunately, Frank undermines that plan immediately as he pulls back to look at her. Chloe can feel his concern like it's her own, and in a way it is, like they're reflecting each other. Once more he seems to already know what she's about to say, which is what pushes her to finally say it.

"I'm an empath and I think you might be one too."

The second thought doesn't occur to her until she's saying it out loud, but it all clicks into place then. Of course Frank is an empath. It explains everything, not in the least how Frank's expression doesn't change other than a tiny wave of relief that comes off him.

"You knew?" Chloe slaps lightly at Frank's chest and they both laugh. "What didn't you say anything?! I've been over here worrying constantly that you're going to find out and hate me forever for invading your privacy or something and you knew the whole time?"

"Well, I don't know if I really  _knew_ exactly, but I had a hunch," Frank says, and Chloe knows that he can feel her happiness just as well as she can feel his.

There's still a nagging thought at the back of her mind that stops her from feeling fully at ease, though, and her consciousness won't let her keep keeping it in.

"And you're okay with it?" Chloe asks. "I mean, the fact that I've been kinda reading your thoughts this whole time?"

"Yes."

Thankfully Frank pauses before answering. Chloe thinks somehow the guilt would just get that much worse if he had responded immediately, but she can tell that he's actually thought about it. There's a heavy feeling of consideration, a thoughtfulness and empathy that should be ironic but is only sincere. Frank punctuates it with a nod and Chloe can't help but smile as she turns back to the canvas, tube of white paint in hand.

She doesn't know how all of this happened (although she has her suspicions, none of them good) and she doesn't know why, but just knowing that Frank understands what it's like and doesn't think any less of her is good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a much shorter chapter, but a much more fun one as well i think!
> 
> regardless, i am a simple man: i finish a chapter, i post it. schedules are for wimps. no rules just right outback monster factory


	4. Chapter 4

The unfortunate side effect of spending more time with Adam, and it _is_ also the only side effect, is that the guilt starts driving Caleb crazy. Every second that they're together and Caleb is invading Adam's privacy when he has no idea it's even possible it just gets worse. It gets worse because Caleb knows that somehow Adam trusts him completely and he has no idea that he shouldn't because why would he?

"I have to tell him," Caleb blurts the second Adam comes up in his next session. "I can't... go around pretending everything's normal and that I haven't been invading his privacy or whatever every second we're in the same place, I can't, especially if— I don't know, if we ever, if I ever tell him, like, how I feel and stuff."

Dr. Bright nods and asks, "Do you trust him?"

"Yeah." Caleb doesn't have to think about it. "Yeah, of course I do. I just..."

He trails off and Dr. Bright motions for him to continue, but he's not sure how to put it. He  _does_ trust Adam. Adam is the best friend he's ever had, and isn't that kind of insane? That they've only known each other for a few months and already Caleb trusts him more than anyone else? But all the time in the world wouldn't make it not scary to admit not just that you've basically been spying on someone your entire friendship but that you have a superpower.

 _You're scared_ , Dr. Bright thinks, and Caleb almost lurches back in his seat because it's true but she shouldn't just say it. Or, well, she didn't, but she knows he can hear her, so it's just as bad.

"I just don't know what to say." Caleb tries to act like he didn't hear her think that. "I don't know how you're supposed to tell someone you like them or whatever, yeah, but also how do you explain that you can hear other people's thoughts? That's _way_ worse, I can't just... say it. Right?"

ФФФ

"I told Frank."

It's the first thing Chloe says when she sits down and Dr. Bright asks how she's been. Immediately she can feel the surprise Dr. Bright can't quite reign in and continues, "But it's okay because he's sort of an empath too? Not in the same sense as me, I think something might have happened to him, do abilities work like that? No, you're skeptical, I guess not. But it's true."

"Chloe," Dr. Bright says after she composes herself and Chloe finally stops, "are you sure? I understand that you have a... _connection_ with Frank, and I agree that talking to him has been beneficial to both of you despite my initial assessment, but—"

"I'm not making it up," Chloe says, "it's not all in my head or anything. He feels it too."

ФФФ

"I mean, I'm crazy, you know?" Dr. Bright tries to answer, but Caleb cuts her off. "I know, I know, being different isn't necessarily a bad thing, whatever, but like... Hearing voices is crazy. That's not something _normal_ people do."

ФФФ

"And, you know, everyone, _everyone_ keeps telling me I'm crazy." Chloe can feel Dr. Bright's frustration pushing at her and it just makes the words come out even faster. "All those doctors before I came here? All the people I see every day who don't know anything but can still tell that something's wrong with me and are always telling me to calm down, it's not that bit a deal? They don't even know the half of it but they still think I'm being 'too much'."

ФФФ

"And it's kind of cool, right? But there's no way I could ever tell anyone because they'd never believe me, and if they did they'd lock me up and I'd have to spend all day in a lab somewhere. And I know I can't tell anyone but at the same time it's just so much effort to lie to everyone constantly." Dr. Bright opens her mouth but Caleb continues over her, "No, but I _am_ lying, I know all these things about everyone and they don't know, and they can't know, and that sucks."

ФФФ

"But Frank gets it! He understands what it's like to feel the feelings of other people, and he processes it the same way. He doesn't think I'm crazy or making this all up, he _believes_ me, and I didn't think that was something so extraordinary until it turned out that my very existence is unbelievable."

ФФФ

"Sometimes I wish I didn't have this ability or whatever so I could just worry about normal things like a normal without having to be afraid of someone else finding out and thinking I've completely lost it."

ФФФ

"I wish that people could see what I can do, what we can do, as the gift that it is, not something to be cured or hidden away or rejected."

When Chloe finally takes a breath, Dr. Bright doesn't say anything. Now that Chloe is paying attention she can distantly feel her calmness like a smooth wall of concrete. It's the same kind of feeling she usually puts up when they're practicing meditation, so Chloe immediately holds onto it and takes a deep breath. All the frustration and indignation that had been building up inside her suddenly washes away, and when she opens her eyes again (when had she closed them?) Dr. Bright is waiting.

"I didn't mean to be so skeptical," she says, "just cautious. Like I said, I think it's wonderful that you have Frank to talk to, but if he really is an empath as well, there may be complications."

Complications? "What does _that_ mean?"

Dr. Bright starts veering off into science territory, talking about observations that have been made about the interactions between different abilities. Chloe tries to pay attention, but she can feel that distance again of Dr. Bright keeping herself at arm's length, holding something back. In this case, though, it feels like a lot more than usual. Chloe can feel just the outline of it, like when you're walking around in the dark and can just tell that there's something right in front of you, even though you can't see it, and it feels dark and heavy and hard. It's not like anything she's ever felt before and suddenly all the hesitations she had that were forgotten in lieu of getting to know Frank are back with an uncomfortable and overbearing vengeance.

Chloe completely checks out, and after a moment more of Dr. Bright explaining what can happen when two empaths are in the same room they lapse into silence and Chloe leaves with seemingly more problems than she came in with.

ФФФ

"No one said you couldn't have 'normal' problems too, Caleb," Dr. Bright says when he runs out of words. "And, for what it's worth, I think you should tell him."

Caleb has to backtrack about three separate thought processes to remember what the start of this whole thing was, and the way that both is and Dr. Bright's thoughts are still racing to keep up doesn't help. Right, Adam. That makes sense.

"But I have to tell him everything," Caleb says again, and Dr. Bright thinks back,  _Yes, Caleb, I got that_. "How do you admit to someone that you've been basically spying on them the entire time you've known each other?"

"Caleb,"  _calm down_ , "from what you've told me, Adam seems like a very smart young man. I'm sure that if you just explain the situation he'll understand, and as for the... atypical in the _colloquial_ sense aspect of your ability, I can give you materials on more established scientific psychological conditions like brain–brain interfacing and extended cognition."

A whole slew of scientific detail comes across the wire at Caleb but he can't understand it and tunes her out because it's suddenly all very real. He can do this, he can _actually_ do this. He can tell Adam everything and might not be a total train wreck and maybe, just maybe, there will be one person who doesn't think he's lost his mind. That's a nice thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S A TWO WAY MONOLOGUE BABY!!!!!!! we won the fic! we can all go home now
> 
> i still might finish this before the show ends!!!!! who knows!!!!! expect me to fail miserably because i've fallen into a deep depression preparing to mourn the actual show. also i only just realized that i basically just copy pasted a line from the canon equivalent of this caleb bit. i didn't even notice, i just know it so well that i just... spit the whole thing out on autopilot lmao sorry miss shippen


	5. Chapter 5

"Sure, Caleb," Adam says, "and I can set things on fire just with the power of my mind."

They're standing in the middle of the park they've walked aimlessly through a dozen times before but now Caleb's just spilled his guts all over the grass and it's not going very well, to be perfectly honest.

_Well, what am I thinking right now?_

"You're asking what you're thinking right now."

Adam opens his mouth skeptically, and then Caleb continues, "But yeah, no, that would be pretty easy to guess, I mean, it's kind of the go-to of every movie about someone who can read minds."

"That's kind of easy to guess too," Adam says, but he blanches, and underneath...

"No, it's not—" Caleb interrupts the uncomfortable silence. "It's not all the time, I can't always hear what someone's thinking. Usually I have to really focus, but with you it's so much easier, I guess—"

But before Caleb can inch into the minefield that is Adam being the exception to every rule there's a dozen thoughts clattering to the surface, so loud that Caleb can't even hear the actual words Adam is saying. And then he's gone. And Caleb is left alone with his own confused, hurt thoughts.

The next day, even as he's explaining what happened to Dr. Bright, he can hear her figuratively sighing, and, okay, maybe he gets a little defensive, but then she calmly explains what actually happened, and it makes so much sense that Caleb wants to slam his head into the coffee table. There's a brief text exchange, an even briefer phone call, and then Caleb is trying not to look like he's freaking out so his mom won't question why they need to go home, right now, immediately.

Only when he sees Adam—not even close enough to really make out, but who else would be standing alone in the park on a slightly chilly Sunday afternoon exactly where they always meet?—does Caleb finally seem to be able to breathe. It's the same park, the same trees in the distance and the mud lining the walking path, but it feels so much more different.

"So you...?"

Caleb doesn't need to hear Adam's thoughts to fill in the blank, but it's nice anyway, the lilt of hope to it, the excitement, the way the second the sentence finishes in his thoughts it's followed by a flutter of increasingly optimistic thoughts. It's a little strange to be hearing from Adam, the way he thinks about words now with this blindingly positive filter, but it's contagious.

"Yeah." Caleb can't help smiling at the burst of hopeful questions. "Yeah, no, and I definitely didn't mean to freak you out, I mean, to be honest I hadn't even really been worried about telling you about this," he waves his hand between their bodies, "I was more focused on... Well. This."

His waving moves higher up, gesturing between their heads, and Adam laughs in that way that means _you're being an idiot, why do I like that so much?_ and when its accompanying thought flashes through, Caleb can't help beaming. It takes Adam a second to piece together what he's smiling about before he realizes what he just thought and starts blushing and staring daggers at the ground. His thoughts are a rush of _shit that was stupid_ and _what else has he heard_ and _ohhhhhh my goddddddd_ over and over, awash in embarrassment, but they all fritz out into silence when Caleb takes his hand.

Caleb can't help but stare at their joined hands in some kind of wonderment, one that only increases when he looks up to see Adam laughing at him. When the silence falls again, comfortable and warm, he hears again, _What am I thinking right now?_

"Uh..." A barrage of memories, most lacking the faded distortion of remembrance or the surreal technicoloring of imagined scenarios, all of the two of them together, painted in an uncharacteristically optimistic way that scares Caleb just a little in what it might mean. "Oh."

Because he's already paying so close attention (because he always is when it comes to Adam), Caleb sees what's coming half a second before it arrives. There's a warm wave of nervous determination and _I can totally do this... right?_ and then Adam is in his space and kissing him and it all goes quiet. Not in the scary way, not in the way that happens when he's all alone and the clamor of other people is missing and the world just feels kind of empty and cold. Now all the words that are usually so hard to get past are muted, like the only thing that matters is what is happening right now.

"Whoa," Caleb says when they finally pull apart. The world comes rushing back somehow brighter and duller at the same time. Everything is much louder, from Adam's _was that good what if it was bad was that a bad idea oh no_ thoughts to just the sounds of, like, the birds in the trees, but it all feels a little further away. It's like all the air rushing into a vacuum.

Adam looks wary but hopeful as he asks, "Yeah?" He doesn't have any more time for panicked thoughts before Caleb kisses him again, just briefly this time.

"Yeah," Caleb says. He searches for something else to say, but there isn't anything. "Yeah."

ФФФ

"Ugh!"

A handful of wet clay splatters onto the ground right before Chloe bangs her head on the nearest table. Across the room Frank laughs and Chloe can feel his bemusement become more defined as he abandons his own work.

"Don't coddle me," she says as his footsteps stop near her head. Without looking up Chloe knows that he's sitting on the stool opposite, smiling his bemused Frank smile with just that hint of "you know you're being ridiculous right now, right?" that Chloe is beyond used to by now.

"Chlo..."

"Frank!" Her head shoots up, hair flaring, and she glares at him when he laughs again.

"I'm sorry, you just have..." Frank gestures to his face. Chloe swipes at her own and clay in various stages of drying comes off—streaks of wet gray from her hands, flakes of old smears that have dried to the table. Undoubtedly some of it is stuck in her hair, judging by probability, Chloe's own luck, and the way Frank keeps laughing.

"Fine." Chloe pushes her hair back with some semblance of dignity. "Mock me if you wish, but at least I have the decency to know when I am defeated."

"You're not defeated," Frank says with absolutely no change in expression, "you just have art block."

Chloe tries to brush it off, but suddenly a melancholy comes over her and makes everything more real. She leans her head on one hand as she finds herself unable to hold Frank's gaze, instead idly rolling a few nearby paintbrushes back and forth on the table. Their clatter makes a poor substitute for conversation but is one nonetheless.

The truth is that she knows it's not just art block. She knows it's more than that, stemming from trust issues she didn't know she had, the paranoia of having superpowers, and, underneath it all, the weary stress of having to constantly field more feeling than one person is meant to handle at a time. Every moment is just so heavy, a cloud of emotion that she has no idea the meaning of but still has to feel as her own.

"It's not just that," she says eventually, and it explains practically nothing but Frank is already nodding. That's the good thing about Frank. He's always just as many steps ahead as Chloe.

"Have you talked to Dr. Bright lately?"

Unfortunately, Frank _also_ knows exactly where all of Chloe's weak spots are, and how to hit them with utmost kindness and precision in equal measure. He's like a kindly assassin that always goes straight for the jugular so his kills don't suffer for long, but only in a way that doesn't sound insensitive to what the real Frank has been through. Chloe isn't quite sure what that is—she still hasn't asked—but needless to say that even if the metaphor needs some work, Frank still isn't afraid of getting right to the heart of a problem.

"No I have not," Chloe tries to say without sounding petulant. She's only half sure it works, as Frank's answering nod could be either humoring or empathetic. Right now, Chloe's too preoccupied to tell which. "I can't just... Nothing's changed, Frank. Why would I go back?"

"Because you think she's hiding something?" Frank asks. "Because honestly, yeah, she probably is. We all have secrets, Chlo."

"I know that." Chloe smacks her hand on the brushes still in her reach, the rest having fallen to the floor somewhere along the way. She should probably be more concerned that she didn't notice that happening. Add it to the list. "But the way she feels it, when the feeling comes up... It's _so_ sketchy, Frank, and I don't think I can trust that."

When Frank nods, Chloe can feel just the edges of his concealed disagreement, and her own frustration starts to bubble to the surface.

"What?" She snaps. "What's so wrong about that? Why would I trust someone with my well-being and all my secrets if I think they're up to something?"

"I just don't think it's that simple," Frank says, and dammit, he means it. "You and I both know this thing isn't too exact, and even if you're right, which I totally believe you are, you can't know  _what_ she's keeping from you."

Chloe feels Frank's sympathy curl through the air and can't help but relax just an infinitesimal amount.

"You can't give up on the one thing that might help you just because it might not be a hundred percent honest," he concludes, and it's like the final dam is broken. Chloe can feel how the weight on her shoulders has not lifted, necessarily, but it's shifted somewhat, onto new muscles, less strained.

She sets her head back down on the table again, this time more gently, and after frustratedly rolling her head back and forth for a moment she looks back up at Frank. Frank is already staring back at her with all his infinite and frustrating patience.

"I have to go back to therapy, don't it?" Chloe asks morosely. Frank only nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO CHAPTERS IN ONE DAY, THE AUDACITY. i'd underestimated myself and had to up the chapter count, but this puts me back up to speed, i suppose. who knows, maybe i'll post two chapters tomorrow too and we'll be done with the whole thing! crazy town


	6. Chapter 6

Caleb is having pretty much the greatest week of his entire life. Everything's coming up Caleb. There's sports wins and not losing his fucking mind and maybe having a boyfriend. He tells Adam everything, every single thing, and not only does Adam not hate him or think he's a freak but he actually kinda likes it? Likes Caleb? Of all the things that have happened in the past year, this shouldn't be the most surprising, but it is, and it's also real, and Caleb is on cloud fucking nine for eternity. He could probably cure cancer just by thinking about it. The world is his oyster or whatever.

Which is why when he goes to therapy and hears some of Dr. Bright's shady government concerns pop up again, Caleb decides to finally do something about it.

"Caleb..."

"I wanna help!" Caleb cuts her off before the familiar excuses come pouring in, although her thoughts don't stop. _It's too dangerous. I can't involve him— I can't involve you, Caleb. I know you're listening, and trust me. There are some lines you can't uncross. _

"Look, I'm always invading someone's privacy, okay? It's like... an occupational hazard of being me." Caleb leans forward in his chair, as earnest as anyone has ever been. "But I want to use it for something good. I want to _help_."

"I... can't ask you to do that, Caleb," Dr. Bright says, but Caleb's gotten really good at this and even the sudden barrage of multiple threads of analytically hopeful planning from her doesn't throw him off. There's something about the time travel girl and blueprints and _Mark, Mark home, Mark safe, Mark awake and alive_. Caleb tries not to react but because the veil is quickly pulled over everything again regardless.

"I _want_ to—"

"You already know too much," Dr. Bright interrupts, harder now. "I don't want you involved in all of this any more than you already are."

She means it. She means more, really, and there's a fiercely protective theme to all the many thoughts she's thinking right now.

But Caleb means what he says, too, so when Dr. Bright ushers him out a little early so she can prepare for her meeting, yes, with that agent from the AM, instead of getting into his mom's waiting car, Caleb fetches Adam from the lobby before they both hide out in the bathroom.

"Had to pick the smallest stall, huh?" Adam asks before stomping on Caleb's feet for the fortieth time.

"Look, we can move over to the handicap one if you want," Caleb says for the thirty-ninth time, "but I don't know when the guy's gonna get here and maybe he's gonna have to use the bathroom, I don't wanna get caught."

Adam rolls his eyes and continues in his attempt to stand more comfortably perched on the toilet seat. His sneakers keep slipping, but eventually he manages it using Caleb's shoulders for balance, and even after he's stable he keeps his hands there, which is nice.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Neither of them can stop smiling stupidly at each other, and when the thought _Oddly romantic for a bathroom stall_ crosses Adam's mind, Caleb can't help laughing. Adam rolls his eyes, again, as he is wont to do, but he kisses Caleb anyway. They're still quietly laughing and kissing when the sound of the door opening nearly scares them out of their skins.

"Sh—"

Adam clamps his hand over Caleb's mouth before he can continue, using his free one to brace against the stall so as not to fall in. There's the sound of the door closing, then pleasant, nondescript humming and oh, gross, okay, peeing, but Caleb can hardly hear any of it over the sound of their own breathing.

 _Is that him?_ Adam thinks really hard in Caleb's direction, and after a bit of investigation Caleb nods quickly. In time with the humming are equally nondescript thoughts about paperwork and Dr. Bright and other bureaucratically mundane things that line up pretty much perfectly with Caleb's limited knowledge of one Agent Owen Green.

 _Oh shit shit shit shit_ , Adam thinks, right around when the thought _Oh goodness, there's someone else in here and I didn't notice. Well, that's embarrassing_ , floats over from Agent Green's head. While the water and then hand dryer run, Caleb silently thanks whoever is listening that Adam had made it so there was only one pair of suspicious feet in the stall and resolves to kiss the hell out of him in gratitude the second Green leaves.

The door swings shut again and Caleb does exactly that for just a second before the shuffling around so they can open the stall door and get the hell out of there.

When they reemerge into the waiting room, Sarah is back at her desk and gives them half a look before turning back to her computer, which makes sense. She's probably seen a lot of weird shit, or at least shit definitely weirder than two shifty teenage boys hiding in the bathroom for an unknown length of time.

"Hi, Sarah," Caleb starts. Adam waves awkwardly. They really should've thought of an excuse beforehand. "Uh, this is just an exercise Dr. Bright is having me do, and uh..."

"No worries, Caleb," Sarah waves him off. "Pretend that I'm not even here."

Caleb steers them over to the couch and glares at Adam as he silently laughs. Thankfully, Sarah puts on her headphones right when Caleb starts to be able to pick up stuff from inside the office. Dr. Bright's thoughts come through clearly, their familiarity making them easy to latch onto, but Agent Green's take a bit more effort. "Okay," he says, "uh, they're doing hellos. Dr. Bright sounds kinda pissed, but he's... just thinking about how pretty she is? Which I guess is nice."

Adam nudges him and when Caleb looks over he sees that Adam has pulled a notepad out of his bag and is diligently taking notes. It's almost adorable enough to distract Caleb, and, okay, maybe does briefly, but quickly the thoughts turn him back to the task at hand. Caleb glances down at the notebook when Adam points to it and reads what Adam has written.

 _Probably_ , Caleb writes underneath Adam's _Does he know anything about Mark?_ but there's a sudden spike in emotion from inside before Caleb can continue.

"Wait, Dr. Bright is— Oh shit, dude, yeah, he _definitely_ knows something is up." Agent Green's thoughts are suddenly very guilty, and Caleb sees a man who looks just like Dr. Bright strapped to a table somewhere and a dozen other mad scientist looking scenes that freak the hell out of him. Caleb is about to tell Adam or maybe write it down so he doesn't have to verbalize it when the door swings open and they both freeze.

Looking like pretty much the definition of "sleaze", the man that walks in immediately goes over to lean on Sarah's desk. "Hey, Sarah," he says with an almost feral grin, "How's it goin'?"

"Damien." Sarah glances over briefly at Caleb and Adam, but the man, Damien, doesn't seem to notice. "What are you—? You're not in the schedule for today."

"When am I ever?" Damien moves to rest one elbow on the counter and it's only then that he sees Caleb and Adam on the sofa. He looks startled for a moment before his charm slides back into place and Caleb realizes what's so eerie about him.

There's nothing, just absolute silence where his thoughts should be. There's a kind of grey cloud where his consciousness is that Caleb can feel the edges of but can't make anything out in. It's uncomfortable and cold like morning mist, and when Damien turns to look at him Caleb feels that mist filling his throat.

"Well hello there," Damien is saying when Caleb finally metaphorically shakes off the wet cold.

"Damien," Sarah starts to say, and her thoughts barely have time to form a _leave them alone_  before that same mist comes over them.

"Sarah," Damien interrupts, not looking away from Caleb and Adam, "you wanted to check out that new cafe, right? On the other side of town? How about you go do that now."

And Sarah  _does_ _it_ , which is just as chilling as the misty feeling. Dr. Bright is still busy in her meeting, Agent Green with her, and Caleb doesn't know about Adam but he suddenly feels far out of his depth.

"So," Damien says once the door closes behind Sarah, "what brings you boys round?"

"Sorry, how did you—?" Adam starts, but Damien interrupts.

"I'm not here for you," Damien says, and miraculously Adam doesn't seem to react at all. More creepy things. "But you I'm surprised about. Has Dr. Bright not filled you in?"

"Uh..." Caleb looks to Adam for help but finds nothing. Where earlier Adam had been there to return Caleb's worried glances, now he just looks vacant. The mist is back again over Adam's thoughts and it's like taking where you think the next step up the stairs would be and falling through nothing but air. "No?"

"Well I know all about  _you_ ," Damien continues. "Mind reader. Very cool."

"What?"

The way Damien's face drops is so satisfying that Caleb almost laughs out loud. "Shit, did I get the wrong kid?"

"No, I—"

"How did you know Caleb can read minds?" Adam sounds like himself, both out loud and in his thoughts. The mist is still there a little and scaring the hell out of Caleb, but it's comfort enough.

"I know all about all of Dr. B's patients," Damien says, having recovered some of his slickness again. "I've been her patient a long time, I'm... sort of a confidante. So, can you read my mind?"

"Uh, no," Caleb says.

"Really?"

"Yeah?" Caleb shrugs. "Maybe you're not thinking hard enough."

"Huh. Guess Dr. Bright was right."

"About what?" Adam interjects. Damien turns towards him with a grin undoubtedly meant to look like one of a lazy snake about to eat its dinner, but it does't entirely work.

"She said our powers might be incompatible," he says. "Something about how they're too similar and cancel each other out."

"And what exactly is your ability? Can you read thoughts too?" Adam's usual curiosity grows warmly behind his excited thoughts before suddenly getting snuffed out by the mist again.

"More like I put the thoughts in your head in the first place, kid, but close enough." Damien stalks over to the sofa opposite Caleb and Adam's and sits on the very edge of it, his elbows on his knees. "Just like with our girl Friday over there. I thought Sarah might want some coffee and so Sarah wanted some coffee. Voila!"

"You can just... make people do whatever you want?" Caleb frowns and tries not to squirm under the collective weight of both his own distrust and Adam's. "That's kind of immoral, isn't it?"

"Oh, like reading people's minds without their permission is so virtuous." Damien crosses his arms and leans back into the sofa. "You're like a real life Big Brother over here—literally, in your case."

Caleb doesn't know quite what to say to that, but luckily—or rather, unluckily—Damien has already turned his sights on Adam.

"What about you, huh?" Damien asks. "Are you one of Dr. B's patients as well?"

"No, I—"

The mist is thickening over Adam's thoughts and the cold of it fills Caleb's brain until it feels like he can't see anything anymore.

"What do you want?" Caleb interrupts. He can just barely feel the edges of Damien's consciousness go hard, more defined in what Caleb can only assume is defiance. It seems like that's one of his defining characteristics, anyway.

"Oh come on, aren't you at least a little excited?" Damien stares right into Caleb's eyes with a kind of intensity that feels eerie juxtaposed to the lack of anything Caleb is used to accompanying feelings like that. "I bet you've never met someone who your power doesn't work on—I know I haven't. As it is, I don't have a lot of unpredictable interactions nowadays, so this is actually kind of nice."

Caleb is saved the trouble of answering that as the door to Dr. Bright's office swings open and everyone freezes.

"Oh," Agent Green, the only person who isn't caught in the headlights, says. "Goodness, it's like Grand Central Station in here. Dr. Bright, are you usually this busy on a Sunday evening?"

"No." _God, this again._  "Damien, what are you doing here?"

"Just waiting for you." Damien reaches out a hand to Agent Green, who shakes it without hesitation. "I'm Damien, one of Dr. B's  _closest_ friends."

"Right," Agent Green says, "of course. Lovely to meet you. And who are you two?"

Caleb feels Dr. Bright's surprise before any of her thoughts even come through, though they don't add much, just a lot of panic and  _Caleb, I told you not to do this_. Unfortunately, they blindside him enough that he doesn't have the ability to come up with a convincing lie.

Luckily, Adam is quicker on his feet. "I'm Adam, and this is Caleb. We're just waiting for Sarah."

"Yeah, she's, uh,"  _faster, Caleb_ , Adam at him, "my sister."

The two of them nod in unison as Dr. Bright, standing slightly behind Agent Green, stares wide-eyed at the ceiling with her hand to her forehead thinking, _This is my life._

"Ah!" Agent Green seems to accept it with only the slightest influence from Damien. "Well, Sarah is a lovely girl. Do give her my best."

"Of course," Dr. Bright intervenes. "Goodbye, Agent Green."

The moment he leaves the room and they hear the distant ding of the elevator, everyone's thoughts explode into chaos. Dr. Bright is a litany of  _this is my worst nightmare_ and  _this is what happens when Damien "intervenes"_ and thinking through different ways to _make sure this never happens again_ , and Adam is just switching intermittently between  _THAT WAS SO COOL_ and  _THAT WAS SO SCARY_ in bolded font, and even Damien's misty void is changing wildly around the edges and it's all just _incredibly_ loud.

"Shut up!"

Miraculously everyone does, although the pervasive numb feeling at the edges of everyone's  _Oh shit, better stop_ thoughts feels like more of a curse than a blessing.

"Sorry," Caleb says after they do, "you were just all thinking really loudly."

Dr. Bright recovers first, slipping back into her standard composure with only a little unease. "Damien, you have crossed a line even further than your usual standard, but this is a conversation for another time. Caleb, I have no idea what you were doing out here but I doubt it was good. Adam," and she sighs, her voice losing it's edge, "it's nice to meet you, although I wish it could have been under other circumstances."

They're all properly chastised, Adam a little less so and Damien decidedly attempting to not look it.

"We were just trying to help," Caleb says defensively. "I knew you had a meeting with the guy from the AM today and—"

"Wait, he knows about the AM?" Damien interrupts.

" _He_ knows about the AM?" Adam asks next, and judging by her thoughts Dr. Bright is about two minutes away from pushing them all down an elevator shaft.

"You—?" Damien fires back before Dr. Bright cuts in.

"None of you should know about the AM," Dr. Bright answers,  _especially not you boys_. "Just as none of you should be here."

Damien throws his hands up. "I'm bowing out of this one," he says, taking a step back into the room. "Dr. B, I'll see you later." He leaves the room with a look on his face that promises he will be back later, but it's a little less effective after seeing Dr. Bright's effective dressing down.

When he's finally out of sight, Dr. Bright sighs again, weary now. "Caleb... I don't know what you two were up to, but you can't go playing around with this kind of thing. I've told you, the AM can be dangerous—"

"I know, that's why we were spying," Caleb interrupts. "You're always thinking about how you can help Mark, and I know you don't want me involved but I know I can use my ability to help and I just— I just want to help. That's all."

 _That's very sweet_ , Dr. Bright thinks distantly. Adam's teasing smile and  _Aww, sap_ , follow close behind.

"That's very kind of you, Caleb," Dr. Bright says, and her thoughts confirm it, "but I meant it when I said that you can't get too involved. There are more forces at play here than even I know."

The flickerings of that same distant glint of cold metal that comes up every time someone mentions the AM are enough to put Caleb off the subject indefinitely, especially after meeting Damien, so the two of them cross their hearts and shuffle out of the office quickly enough.

Caleb and Adam are standing in the elevator for all of a second when Adam thinks distinctly,  _We're still gonna keep investigating, though, right?_

"Oh definitely," Caleb answers out loud, and the whole thing is suddenly so ridiculous that they both can't help but lean into each other as they laugh the rest of the ride down, hysterical and relieved.

ФФФ

When Chloe walks into Dr. Bright's for the first time in weeks, it feels nowhere near as strange as it should. Immediately she feels herself falling back into the same person, her shoulders a little tense, her thoughts just a touch more analytical. Seeing Sarah at her desk, pleasant as always, helps bring Chloe's spirits up a little, but she's still wary going back into the office.

"Chloe," Dr. Bright says with a smile. She means it this time. "It's so nice to see you again. Please, have a seat."

It's a little awkward, of course, but nothing goes disastrously wrong. Dr. Bright asks about how art therapy with Frank has been going, how it is to be back at school. Even with suspicions, though, it's nice to just be able to talk about this stuff. Sure, Chloe has her mom and Frank, both of whom actually have abilities as well, but they don't have the objectivity or expertise of Dr. Bright. It's nice to feel like she isn't _confiding_ but instead just... talking.

Chloe can't settle into it, though. She can't stop being skeptical, and she hates it, it's so against her nature. She finds herself trying to throw in some stuff about honesty to see if Dr. Bright's mood will change or if she might even confess something, but despite the fact that nothing comes up, she still can't feel at ease.

"It's just this _huge_ secret, y'know?" Chloe tries. She finally feels just a twinge of that shady kind of guilt and chases it. "I mean, there are only four people in the whole world who know I'm an empath. You, me, my mom, and Frank. That's it."

Dr. Bright's distant feelings of what Chloe can only quantify as deception start to feel more directed, a nagging worry in the direction of her desk, and that's all Chloe needs to move ahead.

After her session, Chloe waits in the park across the street from the office until she sees Dr. Bright leave for lunch before Chloe herself hurries back inside. When Chloe walks back in, Sarah is busy on the phone. Perfect.

"Lost an earring," Chloe mouths and tugs her ear as she moves with purpose back toward the office. Sarah can't stop her, too busy juggling a notepad and the phone, but she nods distractedly in Chloe's direction, and then she's in.

Chloe heads for the desk first, looking for some kind of secret folder of notes or something. There's a calendar on the desk with all kinds of numbers and initials filled in on different days, which Chloe doesn't know what to do with until she checks today. This Tuesday and every one before it have the same code, #13-A-3, and Chloe can only assume that that means her.

She's about to turn for the file cabinet on the other side of the room when she sees it. Lying on Dr. Bright's desk is a little recorder, sleek and silver. It looks distantly familiar until Chloe realizes that she's seen it before, every time she's come in here. With a quick glance toward the cracked door, she lunges for it and hits the button. Dr. Bright's voice comes out and recites that code before going on to talk about Chloe. She mentions something about keeping some agent up to date this weekend, and that's it. Chloe's fears confirmed.

"Chloe?"

Chloe quickly runs to the opposite side of the room and crouches near the sofa, taking her earring out of her pocket. When the door creaks and Sarah appears, Chloe sits back up.

"Aha!" She says, sneaking past Sarah out the door. "Thanks Sarah, I got it, see you next week!"

When she gets to the stairwell, Chloe can't go any further. She sinks down onto the first step and for a moment allows herself just to feel—panic, betrayal, the bitterly satisfying feeling of being wrong about something awful, the sinking feeling of finding that nothing has changed. Then she stands up, brushes off her hands, and walks straight home. She has work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> caleb and adam get the big section today! woohoo plot! i will probably post the last chapter tonight lol (if i finish it, that is)


	7. Chapter 7

As it was, Caleb and Adam's "study sessions" were already pretty susceptible to devolving into dicking around, but when they have to give up the spying and stakeouts they _really_ become a lost cause.

Without an outlet, now, Adam's millions of questions inevitably all come pouring out at random. They'll being doing homework, or playing a game, or showing each other stupid funny things on Twitter, or kissing, and then Adam will suddenly blurt out, "So how long do you think you can you talk to someone without the other person actually speaking?"

Currently Adam is lying on Caleb's bed with his head hanging off the side, staring upside down at Caleb across the room. All afternoon they've been alternating between trying to dredge out of Google anything that might be capital-a atypical and stealing glances at each other before Adam breaks the silence.

Immediately forgetting what he was doing, Caleb looks up from his phone and spins around in his desk chair. "What?"

"I mean," Adam sits upright, "have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone without them actually saying anything out loud?"

"Uh, not really." Caleb shrugs. "There's not that many people that know and my parents don't like me reading their minds, you know? I think Alice and I tried once, but then I started reading the wrong things, like, stuff she really didn't want me to know, and she made me swear never to tell anyone that she had a crush on Steph or whoever it was. Oh. Oops."

"I can see why your parents don't want you reading their minds," Adam says, but there's a thread of _wait he's probably heard me think all sorts of embarrassing shit oh no_ nervousness running underneath.

"Don't tell her I told you, okay?"

"I don't think that's gonna be an issue," Adam says, and his thoughts move back to the last time he talked to Alice, yesterday, where they just sort of stared at each other warily in the doorway until Caleb appeared, and yeah, that makes sense. They're kind of antithetical to each other, but Caleb thinks they would really get along, but no, that's not this conversation, right.

"But, I mean," Adam continues, "if someone was really focusing on one thought at a time, I bet you could hold a whole conversation with only you talking." _That would be nice. He has a really nice voice. I could probably listen to him talk for hours. Stop, that's creepy, shit, he didn't hear that, right?_

After taking a moment to make sure he doesn't look as flustered as he feels, Caleb manages to get out, "Yeah?"

 _Oh thank god_ , "Yeah, I mean, as long as you don't, like, lead the conversation to make me think about embarrassing things or something."

"No, never. I wouldn't, I promise."

Adam, on the other hand, is not so successful at the whole "not looking flustered" thing, and his face is bright red as he says, "I wasn't being that serious, but that's good to know, I guess," _although_ _god_ _that's cute_.

"Just to be safe, though, you should probably stop thinking about how cute I am."

Caleb can't help saying it, but it's definitely worth it just for the way Adam's thoughts start tripping over themselves, and how they all seem to evaporate when Caleb kisses him.

Definitely worth it.

ФФФ

"It'll be fine, Frank," Chloe says into her phone. She's in the middle of her afternoon commute, walking into the park across from Dr. Bright's office. This is day three, the end of what Dr. Bright could have conceivably been referring to as "the weekend" and it's starting to become routine: sit on the bench, call Frank, and tell him everything she sees while also asking if he has any idea what secret agents look like.

"I'm just glad you're almost done," Frank says in her ear. He was only slightly more on board with the plan after hearing what Chloe discovered in her snooping, but willing enough to act as her disguise-slash-excuse. "This whole thing has been—"

"Ooh, hold that thought."

Someone in a suit walks out of the building across the street with a pile of papers in their arms, tapping away at their Blackberry with one hand.

"What?"

"Shh."

Chloe can only vaguely hear Frank continue in her ear as her concentration turns toward the man in the suit. He's feeling thoughtful, and because Chloe is concentrating she tell that it's directed at the papers in his hand. There's no way she can see what's on them, but judging by the fact that there aren't that many tenets in the building, there's a good chance this is who she's been waiting for.

"Don't follow him," Frank says in her ear just as she's about to start thinking it.

"I wasn't going to," Chloe replies, but the idea is still tempting. If she could just get a glimpse of one of those papers, just to see if it has the same layout as those she saw the other day...

She's about to stand up again and, yes, maybe just wait to see if one of those pages blows off the top of the stack, when somebody sits down on the bench next to her.

"Hey there."

"Uh, hello?"

"Who are you talking to?" Frank is asking, but Chloe suddenly has the urge to hang up the phone, so she does.

The man on the bench next to Chloe would probably be handsome if he cared to be. As is his grey hoodie and leather jacket are both well-worn, and although Chloe has never seen him before, she can already tell he's a bit of a dick. As soon as her brow furrows, though, she realizes that maybe she's being unfairly judgmental. After all, just because she dresses like exactly the kind of person she really is doesn't mean that everyone does, right?

"I'm Damien. And you are?"

"Chloe."

Damien stretches out along the bench, one foot bouncing on his knee, nonchalantly spanning most of the bench. Chloe feels distantly like she should think it's rude, but she doesn't, really.

"I've seen you around before, haven't I?" He asks. "Are you a patient of Dr. B's? Dr. Bright, that is."

"Uh, yeah, actually, I am."

"And are you out here spying on the dear old doc?"

"I... have no idea what gave you that impression," Chloe manages to get out, even though every part of her is fighting to tell the truth.

"Oh come on," Damien raises an eyebrow at her. "Shadily sitting on the same park bench for hours every afternoon on a fake phone call? Oldest trick in the book."

"It wasn't fake." A beat. "Have you been following me?"

For a moment Damien looks guilty, and Chloe wants to take it back, for some godawful reason. "No, I'm just..." he considers, "observant."

"Damien?"

A pair of teenage boys is suddenly at the end of the path, just a few feet ahead. Chloe has no idea why she's only just noticing them, but Damien doesn't seem to be at all surprised as he rolls his eyes and slouches further into the bench.

"Great. The gang's all here."

He grins at the two boys but its seemingly to no avail.

"Damien, you should go," the taller one says. "I don't think you're welcome here."

"What makes you think that?"

"What do you think?"

"Ah," Damien grimaces. "That pesky mind reading."

"Dude!" Chloe can distantly feel the panic and anger of both boys.

"Oh, don't worry, kid," Damien says, waving a dismissive hand. "She's one of us. Chloe here is a patient of Dr. B's as well."

"Seriously. Just go."

"Or we'll call Dr. Bright," the shorter one adds, and that seems to finally get to Damien.

"Alright, okay, no need to go nuclear. I'm sure I'll be seeing you all soon anyway, Caleb." He stands, shoving his hands in his jacket with a practiced air of indifference. "Us atypicals gotta stick together, after all, and I daresay the tides are turning for ol' Damien."

The shorter one rolls his eyes, but the taller one, Caleb, just glares until Damien is out of sight.

Suddenly Chloe feels all the air rush out of her lungs, instead replaced by something heavy and grey. She sags back against the bench, staring blankly at the ground in front of her, and her expression must betray her because one of the boys, she doesn't know which, asks, "Whoa, are you okay?"

"Yeah..." Chloe hears herself say. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, who are you?"

"I'm Caleb," Caleb says unnecessarily. "And you're—Oh! You're Chloe! And you... yeah, you're the one who knows Frank!"

"Um, what...?" Chloe looks back and forth between the two of them until the shorter one sighs and takes pity on her.

"Talking out loud, Caleb," he says. Then, to Chloe, "So I'm Adam, this is Caleb, he can read minds and I guess you have a superpower too?"

Chloe blinks for a second as her brain reboots.

"What, can you read minds too?" When Adam laughs, Chloe tries not to feel too justified, but also she really likes these kids a lot already.

"No, I'm not—" Now that Damien is gone, Chloe can feel the embarrassment in the air. "I'm just really good at picking up on context clues, that's all."

"Pretty good," Caleb corrects, and Adam glares at him.

"Really good."

"Eh... Pretty good."

"Shut up."

"So...?" Chloe feels bad about interrupting when happiness is expanding like a balloon between the two of them, but her confusion must still be lingering in her thoughts as Caleb looks at her.

"Right, sorry," he says in answer to her unspoken question, "yeah no, it can take a while to get used to, I know. You should've seen Adam when I first told him, he totally freaked out. But no, you're definitely doing better, yeah, definitely because you already know about— Wait, your mom is too? Whoa, that's awesome! With her mind? Holy shit."

Adam tugs on the sleeve of Caleb's jacket twice and fixes him with one raised eyebrow in an unimpressed expression that only slightly betrays the fondness Chloe feels coming from him.

"Hey, Caleb?" Adam says. "You wanna share with the class?"

As Caleb starts apologizing with an endearing amount of swearing involved, Chloe says, "It's fine. I'm pretty sure he's talking about how my mom is telekinetic? And yeah, it made it a little less shocking when my ability started, but I don't really know much about this stuff in general, so telepathy is still a... cool surprise."

"A lot cooler than Damien?" Adam offers.

"Yeah." Chloe shakes her head. Her phone is still in her hands and she suddenly remembers how abruptly she had hung up on Frank. "I don't know what that was. It was just... super overwhelming. It was like I just really wanted to tell him things and that was all I could think about, but now that he's gone I really don't want to."

"Yeah, I think we can explain that."

"I wonder if his ability worked better on you because you're an empath," Adam muses aloud.

"Which is what exactly?"

"He can make people want what he wants them to," Caleb says. Chloe's heart sinks a little. "Like putting thoughts into your head. It doesn't work with me, but I guess since you're an empath..."

"You have the thought he wants you to have in the first place plus the feeling of him wanting something too so it's doubled," Adam finishes.

For a second, they all sit in the silence, cars rushing past only distant background noise. The feeling in the air is strange, fragile and bitter and slightly numb, and Chloe contemplates it for a moment before slapping her hands on her lap and standing.

"Yep," she says. "I need some fro-yo."

The three of them walk out of the park together, Caleb basically holding a conversation by himself, Chloe interjecting every so often, and Adam begging either of them to just say things out loud. Caleb and Chloe in particular fall easily into a rhythm, weaving around each other like chefs who have been cooking in the same kitchen for so long that one can turn around just in time to wordlessly trade places and dishes in progress with the other. The different ways each of their minds works go together like two serendipitous pieces from different puzzles—they shouldn't match, and the picture is all wrong, but they fit together nonetheless, and it somehow all makes sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo but remember how dr. b used to troll the paranormal subreddits after the am cut her off because i, for one, will always cherish that fact.
> 
> and so we have come to the end! and so we will come to the next, greater end shortly. it's been a wild, relatively quick ride, y'all. have a wonderful day, and thank you for commenting! bye caleb! bye chloe! bye adam and frank and joan, and yes, even damien, i will miss you too, you terrible bastard! (and everyone else who isn't here lol) i'm sure i'll be back to collect my kids in a month when i'm grieving this show to death, but suffice to say the past three-ish years the bright sessions have been in my life have been immeasurably better for their presence. bye kiddos! love you!

**Author's Note:**

> me in a two am paranoia haze: what if chloe and caleb had each other’s powers.....  
> the ghost that lives in my mirror: whoa dude that sounds awesome
> 
> if you've gotten this far: congrats!!!!! also thank you!!!!! i'm terribly excited about this au and i would love to hear what you think, so leave a comment if you'd like to see more of this in the future or just if you liked this lol
> 
> (and if you like what i write, maybe [kick me a few bucks](http://ko-fi.com/mildlydiscouraging)? your comments and kudos are always SO lovely, but unfortunately i can't use them to buy food lmao)
> 
> tumblr @[lamphous](http://lamphous.tumblr.com)  
> ko-fi @[mildlydiscouraging](https://ko-fi.com/mildlydiscouraging)


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